


they're trying to stop you (run, kid, run)

by ghostkids



Series: welcome to amity park [9]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: (it's complicated), Autistic Dani Fenton (Danny Phantom), Autistic Danny Fenton (Danny Phantom), Blood, Blood and Injury, Danielle "Dani" Fenton & Danny Fenton Are Siblings, Danielle "Dani" Fenton & Danny Fenton Have a Parent/Child Relationship, Danielle "Dani" Phantom Goes By Elle, Elle is not having a good time, Gen, Knives, Major Character Injury, Original Characters - Freeform, POV Dani, POV Ghost Squad, Panic Attack, Trans Dani (Danny Phantom), description of injury, description of panic attack, past trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-13 03:14:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29395347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostkids/pseuds/ghostkids
Summary: elle's been in some precarious situations before. it happens. she's used to it. but this is the first time she's been stuck in a situation where people seem to know what she is and who she's related to. and after seeing that she’s injured, they won't let her leave.
Series: welcome to amity park [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1750180
Comments: 9
Kudos: 28





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> title inspired by lyrics from woodkid's song run, boy, run.

elle runs. the city blurs around her, tilting sickening shades of blue, green, violet. the footsteps race after her, shoes pounding on pavement. they're coming for her, they're all coming for her, and the pain is a ragged slash burning down her side and _how could she have thought that it was a good idea to step in like that_. screw her heroic tendencies - her heart pounds like a drum in her chest, core humming with power that can't be brought to the surface. she can't transform, not here, not now, for fear knowledge of her return gets back to _him._ and these people saw her human face; to transform now could hurt danny, too, and she can't let that happen.

"got you now!" the voice snarls. "you meddling little kid."

elle reels back. the man in front of her still has the knife, knuckles clenched bone-white around the handle. the blade catches the flash of light from solitary streetlight overhead, metal shining iridescent like an oil slick; that's her blood, elle realizes, pulse pounding in her throat. 

but she’s frozen too long; the man lunges forward. arms wrap around her like a vice. dizzy from blood loss and terror, with no strength to break free as the knife comes closer, elle screams.

"danny! danny, help!"

danny can't hear her. but she’s got attention and that's all she needed. a distraction. and there's footsteps, people rushing down the sidewalk, a muffled shout. elle squeezes her eyes shut to hide how they blaze bright green, power surging closer to the surface.

his grip loosens, a moment, and elle takes her chance. she slips into intangibility, lets it ripple through her like water. her attacker yells in rage, but then the police are on him and she's gasping for air she can’t quite get, against the wall, brick digging hard into her shoulders. she has to go, she has to transform _now._ her core sings, almost twisting from the desperate need to _flee_ ; she can't move, her entire body shaking like she's just ran a marathon.

get away. get away. get away. she has to go, she has to transform. she can’t let them take her to the hospital, and they're going to want to. she’s bleeding, a clean line cut straight through the skin from ribs down to stomach, her legs shake from fear, blood loss, and rapidly-rising adrenaline, and someone's talking to her, words muffled. 

"-id? kid? you okay?"

"danny-" elle chokes. her vision swims, spots popping bright and blinding before her eyes as she sucks in air, and for a moment, she swears that it's danny in front of her, black hair and the right height but his voice just slightly off. she blinks hard to clear her vision; her eyes burn ectoplasmic hot, her ghost form trying to break through. she's hurt, hurt bad, and she needs to transform, every instinct in her body screaming at her that she needs to morph, but she needs to not be here to do that and she can’t move and that’s not danny in front of her at all. “he’s- gone?”

“you’re safe now. we got him. you’re safe,” the man reassures her from underwater. his voice sounds too familiar, like a distant memory, and his face looks too familiar, and she remembers in snapshots the vaguest idea of ghost hunting, diving in front of a blast meant for him and how he had then kept the press at bay long enough for her to get away with her identity still intact, and nights of patrol, her flying overhead while he drove down below with the others and tucker and sam followed secretly in the shadows - but those aren't her memories. those are danny's memories, locked into her head by whatever methods _he_ used to create her. 

she can’t tell if this man whose name escapes her thinks danny is the one attacking her, or if he knows danny is someone else, and she doesn't really care, not at the moment. her head is too light, her vision swimming, thoughts slipping straight through her fingers when she tries to think in anything other than fragments.

white sparks flare around her. no! she forces down the transformation. no, she can’t- she can’t transform, not here. they know she's not fully human, they must have seen her go intangible to get away, but she can’t show them the full truth. she can’t put danny at risk like that.

"...phantom?" the person's brow furrows in confusion or concern. he knows danny - she must be close to amity, then. but he doesn't sound sure of himself. too late, she remembers - she's in human form and he shouldn't know she's related to phantom at all. "hey," he says, "can you breathe with me? in through your nose... out through your mouth. that's it, you can do it."

"he's- i need-" she manages to gasp, lungs aching. she can’t breathe. she doesn't even know what she needs. help. her thoughts are scrambled, darting; she can’t put them in the right order to speak, much less think through how to get away. her teeth chatter. she forces words out past the wall clogging her throat. "please- danny-"

"no, definitely not phantom," another voice says. "she's too young. related, maybe? did she tell you her name?"

elle turns to face the newcomer and the ground tilts, swaying under her feet. she barely catches herself on the wall. pain burns her knuckles where they scrape brick; her focus narrows, pinpoint fracturing to millions of pieces, to only that and the sick feeling in her stomach, sharp and acidic, as her legs wobble dangerously.

"whoa there," someone says, and there's a hand on her shoulder, steadying her, and that’s what _he_ did, when she first came out of the pod and her legs were newborn weak, and she feels just like she did that day right down to the bubbling melting feeling in her toes, the rising thrill of fear and _dread_ in her stomach.

she goes intangible out of instinct (too much too _much_ _too much_ ), takes one stumbling step back - someone curses, words sharp and unfamiliar, and her world goes dark. 

  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

"- find phantom?" that's the first thing that elle hears, and that's _probably_ not very promising, but her head is throbbing and her thoughts are swimming through molasses. she turns her head, blinks fuzzily, and realizes that the hair in her eyes is white, not black. she's in ghost mode, without wanting to be, and she just has to hope that no one saw her human face. she doesn't mind so much for herself; she can always run. but she looks too similar to danny, and she might have just put him in danger by coming back to amity- she snaps out of her thoughts at the sound of shoes squeaking on a tiled floor.

"oh, hang on, she's awake," the danny lookalike says. “we can ask her, probably.”

elle groans, still too weak to respond to _that_ statement, and squints up at the ceiling. her head really hurts. dimly, she now remembers hitting something hard when she fell, and that would explain the pain. that might also explain the bandages wrapped around her head, unless she somehow got hurt again after she passed out so abruptly. she doesn't want to think about that possibility too closely.

“how are you feeling?” definitely not danny asks her.

he's leaning over her, his blue eyes just as worried as danny’s would be if he were here. elle can't help but compare the moment to waking up after she had almost melted for good, only this time she is, thankfully, entirely solid. her fingers and toes tingle, burning cold as if at the memory. but she hasn't melted yet; it seems like, whatever danny did, it hasn't stopped working yet.

“hurts,” she manages in response. she should be more scared, she knows. but everything still feels distant, unreal, like things did in the first weeks after she was pulled from her pod, and her head throbs with pain, and all she wants is to find danny and his friends or find some way to get that spare container of emergency ectoplasm that danny had given her before she left the last time - but she’s too drained and she doesn’t think she wants to try pulling her bag out of storage. at her current energy level, that might just make her lose ghost mode, and that's a situation she doesn't want to think about.

“where does it hurt?”

“my- my head.” she isn’t keeping her sentences clipped on purpose; she just doesn’t have the energy for more. every word she speaks sends pain surging through the side of her face. “my side.”

"your side's been stitched up," he explains. "you had quite the injury. you were already starting to heal, impressively fast actually, but it should go more smoothly with stitches in. if it hurts too much, we can definitely get you something to help with the pain."

"you _did_ bump your head pretty hard," the second person says before elle can think of a proper response. "i can get you some ice for that, if you'd like."

"please," elle says, gratefully, determinedly ignoring the thinly veiled curiosity about her healing abilities. they seem to know more than they should, and she can't help but wonder how they got that information.

the woman leaves, returning shortly with an ice pack, which elle presses gratefully to her head. the cold doesn't help much, but it does ease the throbbing in her temples enough for her to concentrate. this turns out to be perfect timing, because the woman starts asking questions that elle realizes must be to check if she has a concussion. elle doesn't think she does, not that she's had enough of them to know. but _danny_ has had enough concussions to know how they feel, and the echo of that feeling sleeps in elle's bones and tells her what it feels like. she feels weird, off, but she's going to blame that on the events of the night, on burning so much energy, and on going almost twenty-four hours so far without sleep.

“do you have a name we can call you?”

“can call me wraith,” elle mutters, using the name she’d decided on with the help of the rest of team phantom. too confusing to have two phantoms on the same team, and danny chose to call himself phantom first. elle isn't a copy. she isn't a mistake, and using the same last name as danny only reminds her that _he_ never saw her as her own person.

"nice to meet you, wraith. i'm sophie, and this is my partner, freddie," sophie says. she smiles warmly, and elle feels just the smallest bit safer. her next words, however, are everything but comforting. “you’re looking for phantom, right?”

elle's stomach drops straight to her toes. not again. so much for being safe. she _knew_ it had to be too good to be true. she knew that there had to be some sort of catch. she thought maybe they were nice people, since they patched her up and all, but maybe she's wrong. her teeth start to chatter, but this time she can’t tell if it's from human fear or ghostly unease or both. she shifts, tries to pull her knees to her chest, and regrets the action as pain burns along her side. she definitely won't be able to fight them if they decide to attack her, not if she can’t even sit up straight.

"you can't trick me," she tells them. "i’m not falling for that one again."

"no tricks. we just want to help you find phantom," freddie explains. "promise."

her hand moves to her wrist, clutching at the silver bracelet that rests there. she runs her thumb over the bumps on the bottom edge and tries to will herself to stop shaking.

"everyone says that, and it’s all tricks," she spits back. everyone’s always saying that, and it’s never turned out well for her; first _him_ , then valerie, then those ghost hunters a few towns over that she really needs to tell danny about when she finds him because their determination to get ‘phantom’ was quite frankly concerning.

as if answering her desperate hopes, the bracelet finally, _finally_ burns cool against her skin. she waits, heart pounding, as the bracelet buzzes with instructions. sophie says something, brow furrowed with what could be concern; elle doesn't quite catch the words, not over the roaring in her ears, but that doesn't matter now.

"well, thanks for the first aid and all, but i'd better scram. see ya!"

"wait-!" sophie cries, but she isn't fast enough.

elle _tugs_ , her core aching from the strain, and slams into intangibility. she rockets straight up through the ceiling, leaving two very confused people staring at each other in shock.


End file.
